Lent

[Our lessons were Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; and Mark 1:9-15.]

We start our Lenten journey with water. First, we hear God’s promise to Noah after the Flood: Never again would God use water to destroy all life on earth. The rainbow, which we now know is merely, but beautifully, the result of light shining through water in the sky after a storm, would be a sign of God’s promise. Water would be a symbol of rebirth and renewal, not death.

Then we hear again, for the second time in a few short weeks, Mark’s brief description of the baptism of Jesus. (Some writers think Mark’s tighter, sparser language was because his Gospel may have been the first written. I wonder whether he was auditioning for a writer on “Headline News.”) Back on the First Sunday after Epiphany, our reading ended with God’s proclamation that Jesus was God’s beloved son, with whom God was well pleased. Today, we begin there.

After Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit “immediately drove him into the wilderness.” We often speak of the Holy Spirit in roles of comforter and strengthener, but here is another one: a driving force that pushes us forward in a direction we hadn’t planned and might not have wanted to go. The Holy Spirit is unpredictable; in Acts we read that the Apostles might be suddenly sent in unplanned directions and that, when Peter was preaching to the Gentiles in Caesarea, before he had even finished, the Spirit apparently decided, “That’s good enough; I’ll take these!” and “fell upon all who heard the word.”

Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, bringing back to mind the forty-year wandering of the people of God after fleeing from Egypt. Lent is intended to symbolize that time in the wilderness for us to help us prepare for Good Friday and Easter. Even as Jesus had the opportunity in the wilderness to reflect on his journey, we are called, as we heard on Ash Wednesday, to “self-examination and repentance; … prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and … reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”

We often speak of what we are going to give up for Lent. Some intend to give up things that are bad for them, sweets, alcohol, smoking, for example. Actually, we shouldn’t wait until Lent to give them up, if they’re bad for us. Perhaps we should think instead of giving up something that is good for us for a time, so we can appreciate it more. It can be also be a good time to take on an additional discipline, such as a Lenten study program or saying the Daily Office. Lent is when we do things differently, so they can have more meaning when we resume them.

In his message for Lent this year, the Archbishop of Canterbury says

It’s important to remember that the word ‘Lent’ itself comes from the old English word for ‘spring’. It’s not about feeling gloomy for forty days; it’s not about making yourself miserable for forty days; it’s not even about giving things up for forty days. Lent is springtime. It’s preparing for that great climax of springtime which is Easter–new life bursting through death. And as we prepare ourselves for Easter during these days, by prayer and by self-denial, what motivates us and what fills the horizon is not self-denial as an end in itself but trying to sweep and clean the room of our own minds and hearts so that the new life really may have room to come in and take over and transform us at Easter.

As we prepare for Easter, we mustn’t focus so thoroughly on our personal growth that we overlook the world outside our doors. As part of our acts of repentance and self-discipline, why don’t we contact our elected officials and encourage them to ensure that, especially in these times of economic hardship, our state and national budgets reflect the importance of God’s justice.

Lent isn’t supposed to be a comfortable season. We take on things and give up things. Our churches lack some of the trappings of the rest of the year and our liturgy gives up “Alleluias.” Lent reminds us that we are pilgrims on a road, not settlers. If we find this Lent difficult, inconvenient, uncomfortable, maybe it will be a sign that we are getting the right idea.

Transfiguration

[Our readings were 2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:16; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; and Mark 9:2-9.]

The Transfiguration of our Lord, of which we hear today, marks a turning point in Jesus’ earthly ministry. From this point, Jesus turns himself towards Jerusalem and the almost certain end of the Cross. There may be some debate as to how precisely Jesus knew what was to come, but there is little doubt that he knew that the religious and civil authorities would put him to death very soon. This, then begins the culmination of his earthly ministry.

“Transfiguration” can happen in various ways, some of which are familiar. When we sometimes speak of how a pregnant woman can seem to have a “glow” about her, we see a form of transfiguration. After the dark of a rain storm, when we see either a rainbow or a shaft of light which transforms the sky, we see a form of transfiguration. In a transfiguration, some aspect of reality which is normally veiled from sight shines forth for a time. Transfiguration does not add something which isn’t there; we are allowed to see something which was there which we hadn’t seen before.

In the story of the Transfiguration we hear today, Jesus took Peter, John and James up on a high mountain. Jesus is transformed with a brilliant light and his garments become a dazzling white, such as no earthly bleach could make. And there appear with him the two greatest prophets of God that had been seen before, Moses and Elijah. After Peter in his usual way interrupts the spectacle by speaking, a cloud overshadows them and a voice from the cloud proclaims, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” And it is over, and they and we are back in the everyday world. What do we make of this?

One thing we learn is that, even at this late date, the disciples aren’t exactly certain just who Jesus is. Peter’s talk of creating three tabernacles or dwellings for them puts Jesus on an equal standing with Moses and Elijah. High ranking indeed, but we know it isn’t high enough. After Peter says this, they are told that Jesus is much more, the Son of God, the Beloved who is to be listened to.

Then Jesus and the disciples are back in the world, walking the road toward Jerusalem and the cross. Transfiguration may change understandings and confirm faith and even confuse us, but it doesn’t remove us from the world in which Jesus lived and in which we live today.

We ourselves have, in some ways, seen Jesus transfigured. We have met him and been fed or healed by him and so we have some experience of that “light”. We have seen his majesty at some point in our lives and we shall never be the same. We have “seen the light,” if only for a moment and we are changed. We still, like Jesus, have the way of the cross to walk in our own lives, but having with the grace of the light we walk in its presence, and our lives, too, will be transfigured if we let Jesus’ light shine through us.

Have you heard a child’s definition of a saint? “They are people the light shines through.” While the child was thinking of the saints in stained glass windows, this is a wonderful definition of a saint, one through whom God’s light shines in the world. We are called to let our own lives be transfigured so that the light will shine through.

This will happen in the middle of the real world, in the middle of our lives, and like with Jesus’ transfiguration, the light isn’t going to be seen all the time. His transfiguration was a single event. We are called to let the light shine through as often as possible and as much as possible. That means constantly seeking to be in his light, so that his light can shine through us into the real world of our way of the cross. None of us is the source of the light. Instead, we are those to whom the light has come. We are those who have to some degree and in our own way been given the light and it is in our day-to-day lives that the light must shine through so that others may receive the light as we did. Here, in Perry, in our lives. Not only on a mountain top, but somewhere along our own ways of the cross.

As we begin Lent this week, we seek to look at ourselves and our service to God and our neighbors. Let us work on letting the light shine through us rather than on the darkness that is in all of us. While we need to be honest about our sins, our failures, our doubts, and our need for God’s grace, the real story and the real meaning of Lent will come as the light returns in the Easter Vigil. The ashes of this coming Wednesday are real, but they will disappear very quickly if we go about our work in the world. And the darkness in our lives can also disappear if we set about letting His light shine through.

We know that the light calls us to us to justice, to honesty, to humility, to the service of his children wherever and whoever they are. The question for each of us is whether we are willing to let his light shine through us. We are called to walk our own personal way of the cross here in this world, in our daily lives, just as Jesus did. The light of the Transfiguration gives us the direction and the strength to follow Jesus. This is what we are called to. Not a negative, self-focused, concern with our sins and failures, but to the task of allowing God’s light, which we received in our Baptism, and which is constantly replenished in the Eucharist, to shine through in the way we live every day, here and now, in our world, in our time.

Look back at what Peter, James and John—and we—are told to do: Listen! Not preserve Jesus like a painting or a statue, but to listen and act.

We are called to seek out the transfigured Christ in the world, and as we do so, we are called to “listen” and to respond with a servant’s heart and in humility. We are called to listen when God’s children are suffering, when they are in need, when they are disenfranchised and subject to injustices.
We are called to listen not only as individuals but also as a community, as a part of the body of Christ. As a part of the body of Christ, we raise up people on our behalf to be in relationship with and to listen to Christ alongside our neighbors in other parts of the world. These people we call missionaries are our ambassadors to be in an active relationship with those who see the transfigured Christ through different lenses than do we.

As we celebrate World Mission Sunday, we especially remember the missionaries of the Episcopal Church; those pilgrims who have been called by God and our communities to leave their homes and to encounter God in other parts of the world, to be in relationship with and to listen to people from a culture and a land that is different from their own.

O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you, bring the nations into your fold, pour out your Spirit upon all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, now and for ever. Amen.

Have You Not Known?

[Our lessons were Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; and Mark 1:29-39.]

“Have You Not Known? Have You Not Heard?”

Our reading from Isaiah is addressed to a broken people long in exile in Babylon. It has been many years since they heard the prophet Ezekiel and they feel forgotten by God. Their Temple is destroyed, Jerusalem has been laid waste, and they are forced to live far from home, serving pagan masters. They must feel about as far from God as it is possible to feel.

We have our times of exile, our times of pain and suffering, when we may feel far from God. A year ago this week, my own father’s two years of illness was ended by his death. Nine years ago, my father-in-law’s brief but painful illness ended in the same way. We all have examples of loved ones, friends, or perhaps even ourselves who have suffered painful, debilitating illnesses. We ask why these good people have been forced to suffer as they did.

In these hard economic times, we have other examples of suffering. To the breadwinner whose job is disappeared, to the family who has lost their home to foreclosure, God may seem very far away indeed. We cry, even as Israel did from Babylon, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God!”

We say that God “sits above the circles of the earth” and he “stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in.” He “brings princes to naught and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.” How can such a mighty God care or even notice our suffering and pain?

He can care because who suffered pain himself. He notices because he had friends die and wept for them. He understands our hunger and thirst because he felt them himself. He knows about death because he died himself and rose to overcome death.

It may be that it is during times of suffering, when our need is greatest, that we are closest to God. We tend when things are going well to think that it is our doing that has gotten us there and we normally fail to give God much credit. But, when things don’t go well, we attribute events to God—I’ve never heard the term “Act of God” used to describe a good thing. We may even say, wrongly, that some suffering is God’s will.

Sometimes the greatest spiritual growth comes through suffering. Like the Exiles, we may need to lose what we have to find strength in the very elements that exile brings into focus: frailty, vulnerability, the potential for sacrificial servanthood. In exile, we can discover the power that a focus on God can bring when we no longer calculate our own self-interest.

In his book, Lament for a Son, Nicholas Wolterstorff claims that human fragility and suffering are central to our being made in the image of God and that, through them, we become God’s temple on earth.

In what respects do we mirror God? … One answer that rarely finds its way onto the list: in our suffering. Perhaps the thought is too appalling. … Are we to mirror [God] ever more closely in suffering? Was it meant that we should be icons in suffering? Is it our glory to suffer?

But, as the Psalmist says, God “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” He “lifts up the lowly” and, in the words of Isaiah, he “gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.” God gives power preferentially to the faint and helpless. The Exiles’ suffering, and ours, is the gateway to God. Human frailty in many ways is its own reward and God will reward it. “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

God is working things out so that our humility and selflessness will blossom in extravagantly new life.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?”

Tony Blair and Barack Obama on Faith

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President Barack Obama spoke to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on faith yesterday.

Tony Blair:

For billions of people, Faith motivates, galvanises, compels and inspires, not to exclude but to embrace; not to provoke conflict but to try to do good. This is Faith in action. You can see it in countless local communities where those from churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, tend the sick, care for the afflicted, work long hours in bad conditions to bring hope to the despairing and salvation to the lost. You can see it in the arousing of the world's conscience to the plight of Africa.

There are a million good deeds done every day by people of Faith. These are those for whom, in the parable of the sower, the seed fell on good soil and yielded sixty or a hundredfold.

What inspires such people? ... That is what inspires: the unconditional nature of God's love. A promise perpetually kept. A covenant never broken.

And in surrendering to God, we become instruments of that love.

...

I only say that there are limits to humanism and beyond those limits God and only God can work. The phrase "fear of God" conjures up the vengeful God of parts of the Old Testament. But "fear of God" means really obedience to God; humility before God; acceptance through God that there is something bigger, better and more important than you. It is that humbling of man's vanity, that stirring of conscience through God's prompting, that recognition of our limitations, that faith alone can bestow.

We can perform acts of mercy, but only God can lend them dignity. We can forgive, but only God forgives completely in the full knowledge of our sin.

And only through God comes grace; and it is God's grace that is unique.

...

Courage in leadership is not simply about having the nerve to take difficult decisions or even in doing the right thing since oftentimes God alone knows what the right thing is.

It is to be in our natural state-which is one of nagging doubt, imperfect knowledge, and uncertain prediction-and to be prepared nonetheless to put on the mantle of responsibility and to stand up in full view of the world, to step out when others step back, to assume the loneliness of the final decision-maker, not sure of success but unsure of it.

And it is in that "not knowing" that the courage lies.

And when in that state, our courage fails, our faith can support it, lift it up, keep it from stumbling.

...

It is fitting at this extraordinary moment in your country's history that we hear that call to action; and we pray that in acting we do God's work and follow God's will.

And by the way, God bless you all.

President Obama:

... [F]ar too often, we have seen faith wielded as a tool to divide us from one another–as an excuse for prejudice and intolerance. Wars have been waged. Innocents have been slaughtered. For centuries, entire religions have been persecuted, all in the name of perceived righteousness.

There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. We read from different texts. We follow different edicts. We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we’re going next–and some subscribe to no faith at all.

But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know.

We know too that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to "love thy neighbor as thyself." The Torah commands, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." In Islam, there is a hadith that reads "None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." And the same is true for Buddhists and Hindus; for followers of Confucius and for humanists. It is, of course, the Golden Rule–the call to love one another; to understand one another; to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.

It is an ancient rule; a simple rule; but also one of the most challenging. For it asks each of us to take some measure of responsibility for the well-being of people we may not know or worship with or agree with on every issue. Sometimes, it asks us to reconcile with bitter enemies or resolve ancient hatreds. And that requires a living, breathing, active faith. It requires us not only to believe, but to do–to give something of ourselves for the benefit of others and the betterment of our world.

...

We come to break bread and give thanks and seek guidance, but also to rededicate ourselves to the mission of love and service that lies at the heart of all humanity. As St. Augustine once said, "Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you."

So let us pray together on this February morning, but let us also work together in all the days and months ahead. For it is only through common struggle and common effort, as brothers and sisters, that we fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God. I ask you to join me in that effort, and I also ask that you pray for me, for my family, and for the continued perfection of our union. Thank you.

Ralph S. Davison, February 8, 1921-February 5, 2008

It was a year ago today that my father died. We miss him.

God of the living, you are the Way, the Truth and the Life: we have lived a year without Ralph. Throughout that time of the turning earth, sun and moon, you have shown us signs of your wonders: the Christmas star of Bethlehem, Easter’s empty tomb, and the tongues of Pentecost fire, which speak of your glory and goodness to all creation. We have counted days of sorrow, laughter and endurance in our journey through grief’s stages. Now we can declare that even though we still feel bruised by the pain of our loss, life continues. You give us yourself in moments of grace, transforming us through your love. We thank you for the distance you have brought us during our year of healing, and ask you to help us become ever more whole in years to come. Keep Ralph present in our hearts, and may we honor his memory, embracing each new day with courage and faith; through Christ, in the Spirit, we pray. Amen.